U.s. Tanks Vs. Desert Sand

First Priority: Breach Iraqi Minefields

December 15, 1991|By David Evans, William Neikirk, David Elsner and Linnet Myers.

To bolster that equipment, the Marines brought in a ``Ninja Dozer,``

named after the Japanese warriors. It was essentially an armored bulldozer.

After Shaw`s team fired off a line charge, an M-60 tank followed, plowing a path, and struck a mine that lifted it two feet off the ground. Those who saw it thought the tankers had been killed, but the hatches flew open, and the four-man crew climbed out. Another M-60 tank tried to go around this tank, but it struck a mine, disabling it as well.

With the lane clogged, combat engineers fired off another line charge to clear an alternate lane, but the line of explosives draped uselessly over a power line.

Groans went up from hundreds of Marines waiting impatiently to get through the minefield. They were sitting atop some of the best high-tech killing equipment in the world, yet it seemed they were still in the Dark Ages when it came to mine-clearing.

A third M-60 ventured out and also hit a mine and was disabled. Finally, a fourth M-60 plowed a lane all the way through the minefield, and everyone seemed relieved.

Capt. Ralph Parkison, 30, from Spokane, Wash., commander of the Bravo Company reserve unit, felt, however, that the lane hadn`t been plowed completely, and so he decided to use one of his M1-A1s to replow the lane. The job fell to Sgt. Robert Trainor, leader of a tank dubbed ``Four Horsemen.``

Three-quarters of the way through, a British-made Iraqi bar mine that had been scooped up onto a bank on one side fell back down into the tank`s path. It exploded and blew parts of the plow and track off. The force of the explosion dislodged a hydraulic hose, and hot fluid spewed crazily inside the tank sending a red mist into the air.

No one could make radio contact with the driver of the tank in his separate compartment, and it was assumed that he had been killed.

Warrant Officer Larry Fritts, 30, of Snohomish, Wash., the 1st platoon Bravo leader, was right behind Trainor in another M1-A1. When he saw the explosion, Fritts told his driver to speed up. There was a pop, apparently a smaller mine going off. ``Keep on going, keep on going, we can`t stop,``

Fritts yelled. There was another pop. The tank continued.

Fritts ordered his driver to stop 20 feet behind the disabled M1-A1, so it could provide cover in case there were enemy tanks or infantry on the other side. He found Trainor and his crew alive. They had put on their gas masks, fearing that they were under chemical attack.

Fritts jumped from his tank and helped with the evacuation. They were relieved to find the driver, Lance Cpl. A.G. Narvaez, alive. He couldn`t communicate because, when he put on his gas mask, he had hooked it up to his radio incorrectly.

Fritts helped the men out of the disabled tank and had them walk on the tracks left by its treads back to his M1-A1. He crammed his tank full with eight men and slowly, carefully, backed out of the minefield to safety.

What happened next made many Marines further doubt the wisdom of using line charges. An M-60 tank with plow attached cut a path through the minefield where no line charge had been used. After hours of struggle, a simple plow had done the job.

Nonetheless, fear of mines affected the tankers as they rolled through the first barrier. The Bravo tankers went through with their feet high off the floor. They said that the plow had left a line of mines down the center of the lane.

``As the tank worked down the track, the belly of the tank was scraping against the mines, putting weight on them,`` said one. ``It takes 400 pounds to blow. It would probably rip the bottom of the tank open.``

An operation that should have taken less than hour had gone on more than five hours in this one lane.

Combat engineers had less trouble breaching the first minefield in the middle two lanes, and the 2nd Division`s forces began moving through. ``It was like the (immigration) gate at Tijuana,`` Col. Livingston said, as the military traffic inched ahead.

As the day wore on, officers became anxious to get key units through. Livingston pressed to get the Army`s heavily armored Tiger Brigade through quickly so that there would be enough daylight left for the brigade to secure high ground on the division`s left flank, where they expected a counterattack from Iraqi armored divisions. The brigade was out of the minefields at around 3 p.m.

On the right flank, the minefield was wider and more thickly and deeply covered with mines. As it turned out, this area marked a ``seam,`` a boundary for two Iraqi divisions, and here they had overlapped mines.

The chemical scare had come early, at 6:31 a.m.

Just as Sgt. Miller`s crew of combat engineers broke through the minefield on the left flank in Lane 1, a German ``Fox`` vehicle, capable of detecting chemical weapons, confirmed positive readings of a nerve agent and mustard gas.

Over the radio came the words no one wanted to hear: ``Gas, gas, gas.``